Day 25

Friday 26^th November 2010

Another early start – we were awake before the alarm again and it was set for 6am! We hit the local bakery for snacks and coffee to see us through the day and said farewell to Paul, our bumbling tour leader and half of the group.

We were being escorted to La Paz today by Dionel, another Tucan representative. Dionel is a much more competent tour leader and we were relieved to be leaving Paul behind at last!

I’m writing this on the bus. We have just left Peru and crossed the border into Bolivia. Bolivia is just 4 hours behind you guys back home so we’ve also lost an hour of our day.

The bus isn’t as plush as the one from Cusco to Puno but we are sat right up front behind the driver so we have got a fantastic view of where we are going. Unfortunately we can also see 7 large cracks across the windscreen which is slightly worrying and caused us to put on our seatbealts as soon as we boarded!

It is a beautiful sunny day and the scenery is breathtaking. We have the rippling blue waters of Lake Titicaca to out left and snow capped mountains up ahead. We are largely passing through farming communities and small towns so there is variety of livestock on the road to avoid – sheep and donkeys being herded by Andean women in typical dress and numerous dogs who appear completely unperturbed by the approaching coach!

The border police were interseting , you show your passport, get it stamped and then just walk to Bolivia, all a bit strange considering all the palava you go through back home.

We stopped for lunch in a little town called Copacabana – this was a million miles away from Copacabana in Rio but was as close as Bolivia could get. It’s a land locked country with a little beach on the banks of Lake Titicaca, hence the name!

Then we changed buses for the rest of our journey to La Paz – the transport was going downhill at every change – this was a real bone cruncher of a bus and we still had another 4 hours to go!

The highlight of this trip was when we reached the end of a peninsular and were all herded off the bus onto a ‘ferry’. This was a small motor boat that took us across the lake. The bus itself was loaded onto a much more unstable looking craft and drifted across with a bloke out front scooping buckets of water out of the boat!! We feared for our bus and our backpacks which were still aboard but were assured that this was completely normal! The bus made it and soon we were back aboard and on our way.

We finally arrived at the hotel at about 5pm after a long and tiring day of doing not very much.

First impressions of La Paz. Franky thinks it’s an absolute shit hole. He has opted to stay in the hotel, have a beer and catch up with facebook. Now I think this gives the hotel too much credit… imagine the worst B&B in Blackpool, add a bit more chintz and take it back 25 years and you’re somewhere in the right ball park. Our room is pink – dark pink carpet, pink curtains, flowery pink bedding with dusky pink sheets. Add to this a blue bathroom suite circa 1978! Jaqui isn’t well so she is going to bed – to shut out the pink! That left Sheridan, Paschael and I to enjoy the orientation tour with Dionel.

La Paz is completely mental. There is traffic everywhere, hooting, blocking up junctions, shunting forward, trying to out do each other and spewing fumes into the narrow streets. There’s already a lack of oxygen at 3600m and this isn’t helped by the pollution.There’s also 2 million people – milling around everywhere and so many street sellers. You appear to be able to buy anything in thus city from a little woman sat at the side of the road in a big skirt and a bowler hat – underwear, toiletries, padlocks and other hardware, shoes, clothes, souvenirs, bread, hotdogs, whiskey, electronics. You name it – they don’t need a shop for it! The Bolivians love it. The government has built a large 3 storey market to contain all these stalls and clean up the streets – but it is empty!

It’s late when we get back to the hotel so we quickly freshen up and head out for dinner. Sheridan isn’t feeling too great either so our numbers are depleted to just 3. We head off to Sol y Lunar on Dionel’s recommendation. Franky gets his first taste of the streets of La Paz! The restaurant turns out to be a little oasis in the crazy city. As we burst though the door gasping for some unpolluted air the guy behind the bar cheerily says – ‘ello guys’ in a Northern English accent. YES!!!!! The menu is varied from all over the world. Paschael and Franky opt for the pasta and I get steak. It’s tasty and cheap. After we’ve eaten we hit the inevitable wall that comes at 10pm so we make our way back to the hotel for some shut eye – feeling a bit more positive about this city and happy in the knowledge that for once we do not have to be up at 6.30am.

Day 24

Thursday 25^th November 2010

I woke up 20 minutes before the alarm this morning, (06:40) this is getting way out of hand.

Baleria knocked on the door at 07:00 ish and I was already up, dressed and packed.

We went down to the “kitchen” for breakfast which consisted of pancakes with “Fanny Jam” (I get the feeling that Fanny are like the Heinz of Peru) and a cup of herb tea that tastes a bit like mint and lemon. I had a visit to the bathroom. Bathroom is definitely too kind a word for the tin out house I found myself in. Once finished there was a bucket of water outside to rinse away the waste, a sort of self flush. Nice!

We had a wash overlooking the lake, the views to be fair were amazing.

I grabbed my bag and crawled out of the doorway (how small are the doorways around here??)

We met the rest of the group down at the harbour for 08:00 and boarded the boat.

Today we were heading to Taquile Island. We could see the other island from the harbour and were informed that it would take an hour and a half to get there. AN HOUR AND A HALF!! I could swim it faster than that. These boats were so slow I think they were powered by guinea pigs!

We took the opportunity to relax at the back of the boat, I had finished Keith Richards in the tin outhouse that morning so I was left with the ipod.

(as an aside this lake is huge, its about 165miles long and 50 miles wide, it was difficult to believe that we weren’t at sea)

We arrived at Taquile Island and were informed that we would visit the town plaza. It was a massive walk up to the plaza which was reminiscent of day two of the Inca Trail. We arrived in the plaza to find that nothing was going on…. Nothing! An hour and a fricking half on a boat and an Everest like climb to see bugger all. Cheers for that!

We sat on a bench and the local guide told us about some of the customs of the island. Such as, the men knit and the women weave, they were voted the best weavers in all of South America a few years back by UNESCO making the majority of their products ridiculously expensive.

The guide told us about the customs of marriage. The wedding day is like a punishment. The bride and groom have to sit on the floor whilst everybody else eats meat (remember meat is for special occasions) and drink cervesa. The couple are not allowed any beer and cannot use their own hands all day, if they do bad things will happen in their marriage. This means that the bride and groom must be fed by their parents and even have to request help in the bathroom so as not to use their own hands….. Grim!

We promptly left the island after the lecture via 500 steps back down to the harbour. We all piled on the boat for the 3 hour boat trip back to Puno. Some people sat inside and read books, others sat at the back and chilled in the sunshine but everyone had sun cream on because the sun was blazing. Everyone that is apart from Jacqui, an Aussie girl who sat out in the sun all the way back with no sun cream on at all. Aussie’s live beneath the hole in the O-Zone layer. HELLO!! Her legs were so burnt by the end of the trip you could have fried an egg on them!

We got back into Puno at about 13:00 ish and went out in search of lunch and Wi-Fi. We found both in a place called ‘Colours’ were we holed up for the afternoon trying to catch up on the blog. We did well too and are now totally up to date, until we go to the salt flats and the Atacama desert next week.

We went back to our hotel (lovely hotel too) for a shower and a change before tea. Tonight is the last night that were all together as a group, tomorrow we split in two, half go to Ariuquipa to see the Nazca Lines (check it out on Wikipedia, looks pretty cool) and we’re off to Bolivia.

We all went “Colours” for tea and had a bit of a farewell drink. We we’re quite sad to leave the group, I guess the intensity of these trips forces you to develop relationships quicker than you normally would.

So to Tracey, Jos, Angela, Callum, Erin and Paul, your company has been a pleasure. So long and good luck with the rest of your travels.

Me, Suzi, Jacqui, Sheridan and Paschael are off to see what Bolivia has to offer.

Day 23

Wednesday 24^th November 2010

Goes without saying really, we were up at 06:30 again. I was under the impression that this was a holiday, I have never been up so consistently early!! Today we begin our 2 day boat trip around Lake Titikaka or translated from Quechua - “GreyPuma”.

We met the rest of the group in the lobby and waiting for us outside was the little tuk tuk type things….(rickshaws???), but you sat on the front and the bloke cycled behind you. These were quite fun in theory but when you the throw the Peruvian traffic into the mix as our guide put it “its adventurous, but safe…. Sort of”.

We hopped aboard and made our way down to the harbour, a little hair-raising but it felt more like real life Mario Kart without the shells etc… everyone willing their driver to over take.

We stopped a few blocks from the harbour at a little store where we bought gifts for our hosts on the Islands. We purchased some rice, pasta and a sort of cake that the people of Amantani Island like to eat at Christmas.

We boarded the boat and headed off to our first port of call, the reed islands, home to the Uros peple. The island we visited was called Sayapacha meaning beautiful earth. These islands are made up a layer of roots which are buoyant. They source them from a few kilometres away so they cut them up into 3 foot square blocks and float them across, the blocks then knit back together to form the base. On top of this they put lots of reeds layered in a crosshatch kind of style, these need to be replenished weekly to replace the decaying ones underneath, what a fascinating way to live!!

The President of our island told us how things work. There are five families on the island and everybody has to muck in when it comes to relaying the reeds or hunting/ fishing etc. If some of the other families don’t feel like your pulling your weight, they get the big saw out and cut you adrift. MINT.

He also said that if you have any problems with the neighbouring islands you simply float away to somewhere more desirable. DOUBLE MINT!!

The ladies then took us into there homes and dressed us up as locals.

We had a bit of a wander around their island, they have solar panels donated from the ex-presidente, which provide the families with lights and essentially TV, you gotta keep up with America’s Next Top Model when you live floating on a lake.

We bought a tapestry and boarded the boat for the next leg.

Our next stop was the reed island next door but we only spent 10 minutes on here, they had a primary school there and a supermarket. Unbelievable.

Back aboard the boat the last stop of the day was where we would stay for the night. Amantani Island. This is the largest island on the Peruvian side of the lake. We arrived at about 13:30 and were introduced to our family for the next day or so. Our host was called Baleria, like Malaria with a B!

She guided us up to her “house” and showed us to our room. The room was no more than 6” x 8 and had three beds in there. I sat on one of the beds shaking my head and Suz went off to find Balaria to help make lunch.

Suz was given the task of shelling beans and peeling potatoes with the biggest knife I’ve seen, I thought a finger was going to go flying any minute. I choose to stay in the room and read Keith Richards autobiography ‘Life’. (good book, I’ve been reading it for about a fortnight and would recommend it).

I was called down for lunch which was quinua soup made out of the beans and potatoes and some grain which was pretty nice as it goes. Especially when you se the ‘kitchen’ facilities she was working with!

I reckon I have made better dens than her house. The second course was rice, more potatoes and a slab of cooked cheese. The cheese was ok but really squeaky as you ate it. Hmmmm

After lunch Balaria decided she would go for a walk, which is fine apart from the fact that we had to meet the rest of the group at 16:00 and she was supposed to be showing us where this place was. It was five to four so we decided to go and try to find them ourselves.

We found the group at the top of the hill where we were supposed to be having a game of football with the locals, unfortunately the pitch was being ‘renovated’ so that didn’t happen. The rest of the group decided to walk to the top of the island to watch the sunset, me, Suz, Jos, Angela and Tracey decided to sit in a local café and play Yatzee – a dice game. What a random day.

Our guide eventually came to find us at 18:00 and led us back down to the house, we had a bit of a relax and then tea was served about 19:30. We had more soup and then a pasta and potato dish (always double carbs!) which seemed to have meat in it but we were told they only have meat on very special occasions so I’m not really sure what it was.

We were dressed as locals for the second time today and were guided off to the local dance hall for a bit of a party. The local musicians came in and played some traditional music whilst the rest of us had a bit of a knees up…. For an hour.

That was about all we could manage – dancing at 4000m really takes it pout of you! Then the music stopped and everybody went home. It was 20:30!

We slid underneath the blankets (6, maybe 8 of them, which means you feel like you’re sleeping in a straight jacket) and quickly found ourselves in dreamy dream land. Another exhausting day in the bag.

Day 22

Tuesday 23^rd November 2010

Another early start but today should be an easy day as all we have to do is get the local bus to Puno.

We are pleasantly surprised that we do not even have to walk to the bus station as we have minibus transfer and even more pleasantly surprised when we see the local bus. We have spacious reclining seats with leg rests and there is even a toilet on board. I appreciate that I seem to be blogging about toilets on an almost daily basis but believe me you don’t realise how important these things are to you until you are deprived of the most basic of human rights – a seat, loo roll and a flushing mechanism!

We set off and tucked into our home made breakfast of cream cheese and ham sarneys. Erin and Callum were digging into their homemade butties too - Cheese and Fanny Mustard ( i'm not being rude, enlarge the pic and check out the mustard bottle)

There was even a DVD to watch – The Blind Side with Sandra Bullock.

I thought that the trip was going to pass without event – how wrong could I be? I also thought I was accustomed to the altitude but as we climbed steadily higher and higher to an all time high of 4838m I began to feel sicker and sicker. I tried to sleep it off and ignore Franky who, completely unaffected, was tucking into his second round of sandwiches of the day. Unfortuately the altitude won and it wasn’t long before I was thankful that we’d brought along extra carrier bags as I had my head stuck in one. I feel that karma was playing it’s part as Franky who had blissfully slept through my middle of the night packing now had my bags of chunder to deal with. That’s love right there that is!

Now you’d think once you’d been sick you’d feel better but no – I thought I might hold out but less than 10 mins from our hotel I filled my second carrier bag. There was no-one more delighted than me to reach our destination, check in and curl up in bed. The bonus was this was also the nicest hotel we’d had by far. It even had a bath!!!!

Franky went to the briefing meeting, had a couple of drinks with the group and went out for pizza. I mostly threw up, slept and watched Friends with Spanish subtitles. When he returned I was feeling well enough to utilise the facilities – I had a bath! And then we settled in for another early night, with another early start looming in the morning.

Day 21

Monday 22^nd November 2010

Despite waking up at 5am we ignored our pre-programmed body clocks and managed to get back to sleep til 8am – what a lie in!!!

We bumped into the rest of the gang at Jack’s where we all congregated for a beautiful and leisurely breakfast with amazing juice and coffee. Today was a free day in Cusco to do as you pleased and generally try to recover from the Inca Trail.

We opted to do as little as possible! Laundry was being taken care of by the hotel – all 6 stinking kilos that we had brought back from the trail. So we camped out in a café bar to catch up with what had been going on in the world of football in our absence and skype the parents so they knew we weren’t dead!!! After overstaying our welcome in the first café we moved cafés to a much nicer establishment with much a much faster internet connection where we spent a lovely afternoon drinking beer, trying to get the blog up to date and chatting with Tracey and Jos – a couple from our group.

We did some shopping for essentials – namely toiletries and provisions for the following day’s bus journey – 7 hours to Puno with no lunch stop!

Then we met up with the gang for a curry at the imaginatively named ‘Indian restaurant’.

An all you can eat buffet for less than £4 each!!! Brendan was leaving the tour so it was his last night with the gang. So, feeling in the party spirit and thinking we had got the altitude thing nailed we headed off to a bar for a NIGHT OUT!!!!!! - our first proper night out of the honeymoon. To make things even better there appeared to be some never ending happy hour on at Mushroom bar with cocktails on 2-4-1 – it seemed rude not to take advantage of this offer.

We stumbled home at 12.30am on Tuesday – the first time we had made it past midnight in Peru! We didn’t turn into pumpkins or anything!

We reached our hotel room which looked like a bomb site and I was sobered by the reality that we had a 7am start again in the morning and the contents of all our bags were splayed liberally across the room. Franky decided he’d like another shower. We had no towels and as he was already naked in preparation I went down to reception to request towels. On my return I found him still bollock naked but now fast asleep curled up amongst the carnage of the room.



As he was unrousable this left me with no choice but to pack all the bags up to the dulcet tones of the guy in the room across from us who was definitely getting his sleep as his snoring was like a series of small earthquakes. As I zipped up the last bag at 2am Franky opened one eye and said ‘Thanks for packing, I love you!’…… I thought that’s all well and good but I still have to get up in 4 hours! Grrrrr!

Day 20

Sunday 21^st November 2010 : Day Four of the Inca Trail

Half past three!!! HALF PAST THREE!! And not so much as a Coca Tea???

The porters have to leave extra early on the final day to catch the train so we were all up and dressed and raring to go by 04:30. The fact the checkpoint doesn’t open until 05:30 was not welcomed by the group. We stood in a queue in the dark for an hour or so and watched the sunrise.

Sounds good? It wasn’t. Although watching one of the group sit down in some human excrement lightened the mood.

The gates opened and people shot off like the start of a marathon. We reverted back to slow and steady wins the race. About ten minutes in Kiwi Bitch came skipping up behind us. She shuffled this way and that for a good 15 minutes before getting past me on my blind side, she then passed Suz and I thought Suz was going to give her a whack, but like a good English lady she just gave out a loud tut!

We were told that the trek was about an hour or so and by then you should reach the 50 steps. Once you’re up these it was another 10 minutes to the sun gate or “Intipunku”.

We ploughed on at an increased pace, vexed by all the people pushing their way past us.

We reached the 50 steps in good time and hauled ourselves up them,

we picked up the pace again as we sensed the sun gate getting nearer and nearer. Then all of a sudden it was upon us, we walked through the opening, rounded the corner and braced ourselves for the majestic site of Machu Picchu, the pay off for four days of blood, sweat and tears. And what we saw was indescribable, well, not really I can describe it perfectly, if you look out of your window right now you can see it too - cloud, cloud and more cloud. L

Some members of our group had arrived 10 minutes before us and had seen Machu Picchu in all its morning glory, but as we sat and ate our Snickers in disbelief the cloud just got thicker and thicker!

We figured there wasn’t too much point in hanging around looking at cloud so we set off. Suzi was really upset, she thought that the sun gate was the place where you took the “postcard” shots (it wasn’t). Her mood was lightened a little by the opportunity to have a picture taken with a wild Llama who was just sat on the track.

Another 40 minutes soon passed and we finally arrived at Machu Picchu. The historic city in the clouds discovered in 1911 by one Hiram Bingham, an American explorer. It’s huge, probably as big as Bury town centre and very impressive to witness, the skill and craft that went into every stone is amazing. Historians believe that it took the Inca’s over a 100 years to build and it remains unfinished, and we were whinging about Wembley!

We took some photos that are defiantly “keepers” and then tried to search out some ridiculously over priced sandwiches. Luckily we didn’t have to look far as the woman in the tourist café was more than happy to bend me over a barrel for two butties and a drink each (£15).

We then had a two and a half hour guided tour of Machu including “the temple of the sun” and “the sacred plaza”, the sun had come out by now making it a pretty nice walk round (I say walk, everyone in our group hobbled around Machu Picchu and the distinctive sound of screaming thighs and calves could be heard for days afterwards).

We also saw the royal tomb with three steps which represents the three levels of existence in the Inca world – the Snake (underworld), the Puma (the present) and Condor (celestial world).

We walked back towards the exit where you could get your passport stamped to confirm you had completed the Inca Trail, I’ve not been so proud of a stamp since I completed my Kelloggs form for a Corn Flakes bowl!

After the tour we caught the bus into town, it was awesome, travelling without moving is so underrated. We found a bar and sat and reflected on the last 4 days whilst chugging down a few beers and listen to traditional Andean Music.

We caught our train at 15:30 and was back in the hotel in Cusco for 19:30. We climbed into bed, watched half an hour of “Finding Nemo” and fell into a hiking induced coma.

Day 19

Saturday 20^th November 2010 : Day Three of the Inca Trail

Today was billed as the easier day. Mainly down hill we were told, take in the sights we were told. We were set to cover 16km today and we stuck together as a group as there were lots of Inca sites to be seen.

We congrgated for breakfast.

and then set off..................... up hill.

Me: “Hold on a minute I thought this was supposed to be the down hill day?”

Guide: “it is… mostly”

Me: “what you mean by mostly?”

Guide: “60%”

Me: “great”

What can you do? Your 4000m up in the Andean Mountains! So we followed the pack. I spent the majority of the morning following the person’s boots in front of me, some really nice Salamon shoes they were, lovely. I have no idea what the view was like due to this, it was my trick so that I didn’t notice whether we were going up or down hill.

We stopped first at Runkurakay which is over the second pass standing at just under 4000m.

Locals believe that this was used as a look out point as from here there is only one path to Machu Picchu. Due to this it offers superb views across the valley. Callum – the lad who was being sick during the night- took this opportunity to take a wee nap, as we were told about the Chaskis who were the Inca messengers, they would often cover over 100kms per day.

We left there and headed up….again. we took a break at the third pass for some well earned water and Cadbury’s fruit and nut (essential hiking food)

and then headed down (woo hoo!) towards Sayacmarka which is perched high on a ridge about 3600m, the only access to this is via the steps that were cut into the mountain. (more steps J)

Reuben (guide) pointed out that lunch was directly across the valley and joked that a cable car would be taking us across. Instead of the cable car was a walk down one side of the valley and up the other. We arrived at lunch camp and Suzi’s nemesis had already arrived. (Suzi’s nemesis is a woman from the first day who everybody seemed to take an instant dislike to. Really harsh face, skinny, constantly skipping past like a mountain goat and leggings so tight you she might as well as been naked. She kept trying to get past Suz on very narrow parts of the trail and the fact that she seemed to be taking it all in her stride whilst the rest of us huffed and puffed our way up made it worse. We hated her and she seemed to turn up at every corner…. Kiwi Bitch!). we moved her on and wolfed lunch down so fast I have no idea now what it was!

After lunch was down hill all the way and I soon wished I was going back up. The amount of force put through the knees was crippling, we stumbled and uhh, ow, ouched our way down for the rest of the afternoon. The only thing keeping us going was the hope that Kiwi Bitch might be lay in the track with a broken limb just around the next corner, I’m kidding, we were promised a warm shower and a beer at camp on day three and after two days of grime this was a huge incentive!

Then the rain came, which was nice, and we ploughed on with our jackets on. Shortly after the rain began we got to the Inca Tunnel which is 20m long and carved out of solid rock, pretty impressive seeing as they didn’t exactly have drills back then.

A short walk later we came to an opening where you could see Waynu Picchu, the small mountain in the background of all pictures of Machu Picchu, the other side of that was where we were heading.

This seemed positive – what was not so positive was the fact that Suzi’s bowels appeared to have given into the altitude and whilst she was delighted to find a ‘Bano’ or toilet at such a remote spot she was not so delighted when she discovered the ‘toilet’ was little more that a piece of drain pipe cut across and set in concrete in the floor of a shack with a door that wouldn’t close!!! Suffice to say aim was difficult and many more before her had tried and failed!!!

We hit our last Inca site of the day – Phuyupatamarca ‘the town above the clouds’, but to be honest all we wanted to do was get below the clouds and get to camp!!!

The last downhill of the day took us just over an hour and was crippling, we were offered two routes when we neared the bottom, you can go left for a scenically superior route over the terraces but it was 50 minutes longer to complete or you could go down a winding path to camp which took 20 minutes.  

20 minutes later in camp (Winay Wayna) we found the showers and were told that the trick was to turn the tap on the shower just a touch to get hot water. The showers were most welcome, what was not welcome was the naked guy stood in front of me who “flossed” with his towel for a good five minutes and then seemed to perform some sort of minor keyhole surgery on himself with said towel.

We grabbed a beer (mmmmmmmm)

and went to the mess tent for tea. Tea was a bit…..shit. Everything was cold and served really late (about 20:30). We had to be up for 03:30!

The tents were pitched on camp site 9. Two minutes walk from the shower and the bar but also just above the toilets, which stank to high heaven. I guess this hiking lark is about compromise.

We almost dived into bed after tea and prepared ourselves for tomorrow. An early trek to the sun gate for our first glimpse of Machu Picchu!